


Beginnings

by NammiKisulora



Series: Beginnings and Endings [1]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: (Just a little bit), Angst, Body Horror, Brief contemplation of suicide (Jonny wants some brain bleach), Canon-Typical Violence, Drinking, F/F, Gen, Non-consesual surgery/medical experiments (referenced), Referenced spaceship fucking, Swearing, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28127943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NammiKisulora/pseuds/NammiKisulora
Summary: ”He pitches forward, trying and failing to catch himself before he hits the ground, driving the knife deeper. He coughs up more blood and vaguely registers his body going numb.And Jonny Vangelis is no more.-He wakes with a gasp, alone in a cold room and a pain unlike anything he’s ever felt before in his chest. There is also a noise, a slight tick-tick tick-tick that he can’t place. He can’t see a clock anywhere, and after listening for a while he realises that it must be coming from him.A look on how the early days of the Mechanisms could have looked like.
Relationships: Drumbot Brian & Jonny d'Ville, Drumbot Brian & Nastya Rasputina, Jonny d'Ville & Ashes O'Reilly, Jonny d'Ville & Nastya Rasputina, The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina, The Mechanisms Ensemble & The Mechanisms Ensemble
Series: Beginnings and Endings [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2084511
Comments: 22
Kudos: 39





	1. Jonny & Nastya

”Oh.” Jonny reached up to touch the knife embedded in his heart. “I’m screwed, aren’t I?” He coughs and drops to his knees, choking on the blood suddenly rising in his throat. Whoever he was fighting has abandoned him for dead, which – He pitches forward, trying and failing to catch himself before he hits the ground, driving the knife deeper. He coughs up more blood and vaguely registers his body going numb. People are shouting above him and someone steps on his hand, but he hardly feels it.

His thoughts are becoming fuzzy and his vision is dimming, and suddenly he’s scared. So very, very scared. He wants to cry out, for his father, for Carmilla, for _anyone_ , just so he doesn’t have to be alone, even if they can’t help him. But there isn’t anyone, and there is too much blood in his mouth, and he can’t – he can’t…

And Jonny Vangelis is no more.

*

He wakes with a gasp, alone in a cold room and a pain unlike anything he’s ever felt before in his chest. There is also a noise, a slight tick-tick tick-tick that he can’t place. He can’t see a clock anywhere, and after listening for a while he realises that it must be coming from him.

The effort it takes to lift move his arm makes him nauseous. With trembling fingers he fumbles at the sheet covering him, pushing it down towards his waist. On the left side of his chest, there is a lump of metal sticking out of his skin, and inside it something ticks in a mockery of heartbeats.

He whimpers and gags, bile rising in his throat. He was dying, he was _dead_ ! And now he’s not. The ticking of the metal _thing_ speeds up and Jonny shudders. The tears burn hot against his temples; he doesn’t understand, what happened, who did this, _why_?

“Ah, you’re awake. And it _worked_!” Carmilla, of course it was her. Suddenly she is next to him, her cold fingers poking and prodding his chest and the metal thing where his heart should be. “Jonny, how do you feel?” She beams at him, practically bouncing with excitement.

“The fuck does it look like”, he croaks, and it’s only now she seems to take in his tear streaked face and panicked eyes.

“Oh. Does it hurt?”

“Yes!”

“I’ll give you something for the pain, and then I’ll do a proper examination. This is very exciting, don’t you think?” Her tone brokers no argument, so Jonny settles for a non-committal shrug that he immediately regrets, pain shooting through him at the movement.

*

The examination hurts, despite the painkillers. Carmilla pokes and prods, oblivious to his discomfort in her bubble of pride and excitement. When it’s finally over, she asks if he’s hungry, as an afterthought on her way out of the med bay. Jonny just shakes his head before making the painful turn to face the wall.

She leaves him alone most of the following week, only comes in with food he barely touches whenever she remembers. After a few days, when he can finally stand up for more than a few minutes at the time, he ventures out into the ship to his own room, but it’s still a while before the thought of doing anything but lie in bed, staring blankly at the wall.

When he finally gets up and goes to find Carmilla to ask where they are going next, she doesn’t reply to his greeting. Instead, she pulls her gun and shoots him point blank in the head.

He has no idea how long has passed when he comes to again, still lying on the floor of Carmilla’s workroom in a puddle of drying blood. His head aches like it’s about to split in two, but when he raises his hand to check, the bullet hole is gone. He barely has time to roll over before he throws up, his metal heart ticking furiously, the maddening tick-tick-tick drowning out every other sound.

“Oh Jonny, you’re back, wonderful!” Carmilla looms into view above him, smiling brightly. “As to where we are going, I’m not quite sure. Do you have any ideas? Requests? Somewhere new you want to see? Just clean up this mess and we’ll get to work on finding somewhere we can find a few new good stories to tell, hm?”

And Jonny does, eyes squeezed shut against the pounding in his head. Is – is this his life now? _Forever_? The thought makes him shiver.

*

The girl is young, maybe eighteen or nineteen, tall and slim and _still_. Jonny can see the flutter of a pulse on the side of her neck, so he knows she’s still alive, but not for long. Unless…

“Fuck you!” he shouts. “Not another one!”

“Jonny, help me with her or get out”, Carmilla says, infuriatingly calm. He is about to stomp off to shoot a couple of crates to splinters or something when the girl whimpers feebly. He stops dead in his tracks; he can’t leave her! She must be terrified, and despite all the many, many things he has to admit that Carmilla is, comforting is not one of them. He takes a hesitant step towards them, holding out his arms. Carmilla unceremoniously dumps the girl’s unconscious body into his arms and goes to ready her operating table.

She makes Jonny wait outside during the actual operation; she has always preferred to be alone when she works. So he paces the corridor, up and down, up and down, turning his gun over and over in his hands. Right now someone else is becoming – whatever the fuck he is these days, and there is nothing he can do to stop it! He hurls the gun into the wall with a choked cry.

Dying and coming back still hurts, even after all these years. Maybe a little less since he isn’t afraid of it any more, but it will never become a pleasant experience. Not that it stops him from diving head first into all sorts of dangerous situations, where the likelihood of being killed it high, but what the fuck is he supposed to do?! Maybe one of these days, some stupid decision or other might actually get him killed for real.

Finally Carmilla steps out of the med bay, covered in blood and something silvery. She is smiling her brightest smile, which means the experiment must have been a success. Jonny swallows around the lump in his throat.

“Would you please take care of her when she wakes up? I do remember how hard it was for you, all on your own”, Carmilla says before wandering off to her own quarters.

*

The girl’s hand is strangely grey and icy cold when he takes it, and she isn’t breathing. Maybe it failed after all? Maybe she’s really dead? But Carmilla seemed sure it had worked, and presumably she knows that part better than he does. _Unfortunately_. He sighs and settles into the chair next to the bed.

It’s maybe an hour later when the girl gasps quietly and stirs before moaning in pain. Jonny is startled out of his brooding and takes two quick steps to sit down next to her instead. As the bed dips under his weight, her eyes fly open and she tries to scramble backwards, only to fail with a weak cry.

“D-don’t come a-any c-closer!” she croaks, her breaths coming in small, panicked gasps.

“Hey, hey, hey, it’s okay”, Jonny tries, holding up his hands. “You’re okay. Carmilla… saved you.” The words taste bitter on his tongue, but it’s the closest thing to the truth he can tell her right now. For all he knows, she agreed to this, although her panicked confusion makes it seem unlikely. He tries a different tack. “I’m Jonny, what’s your name?”

“A-anastasia”, she mumbles. Then she frowns and shakes her head. “No. Not – any more. Nastya.”

“Nastya. Well, welcome aboard the Aurora, our shiny new starship, freshly acquired. She’s from around here too, so you should feel right at home.” He tries to grin, but it comes out shaky, and Nastya only frowns deeper. With a sigh, Jonny sits back in the chair instead of the side of the bed. “Try to get some rest. I’ll be around”, he says. Nastya closes her eyes and nods.

*

“Who is singing?” Nastya asks the next time she wakes up, after drinking a bit of water and looking at Jonny with haughty, sceptical eyes.

“Singing? What do you mean?”

“Can’t you hear it? It’s – it’s _everywhere_ ”, Nastya breathes, looking around the room. Jonny tries to listen for it, but all he can hear is the hum of engines.

“Sorry. You think you can walk? I’ve made up a room for you, it’s a bit cosier than the med bay.” Nastya looks doubtful, but with an arm around Jonny’s shoulders she manages to stagger to the room he picked, the one next to his own. He notices her skin is still disconcertingly cold, but she is definitely alive.

He helps her into the bed, because the short walk appears to have drained her completely. She just shakes her head when he asks if she’s hungry, her eyes unfocused as she presses her ear to the wall.

“It’s beautiful”, she says, and Jonny rolls his eyes. Whatever the fuck Carmilla did to her, it must’ve scrambled her brains a bit, too. And speaking of Carmilla…

“Um, yeah, about the doc”, he starts conversationally. How can he break this… delicately? “She’ll probably leave you alone for a few days, until you’ve recovered enough to be up and about, but then she’ll try, um. To kill you. No, let me rephrase. She’s going to kill you, to see if you get back up again.” He still feels sick at the memory of his first death after his mechanisation, and apparently the idea is enough to distract Nastya from the mysterious singing.

“Why?” she asks, and Jonny shrugs.

“Dunno. Her idea of proper methodology, I guess. You’re one of her _experiments_ now.” He spits out the word like it’s acid on his tongue, and hell, it feels like it.

“Like you?”

“Yeah. Like me.” He grimaces, uncomfortable. Why did she have to stick him with the babysitting duty?! Why can’t she take care of her own bloody strays? “You’ll be alright for a while?” When Nastya nods, turning back towards the wall, he sidles out and off in search of something to destroy.

*

“It’s her”, Nastya says, patting a pipe snaking its way up the wall. “It’s Aurora who’s singing.”

“The fuck does that mean?”

“She’s alive, didn’t you know?” She leans her cheek against the warm metal, and for a moment the hum of the engines intensifies.

“Huh.” Jonny looks around him. He did in fact not know this, and he isn’t sure he likes it. It’s been a few months since he stole the Aurora for them, and almost as long since Nastya joined the crew, and it’s still very strange for him not to be alone with the Doc any more. In a way it’s a relief that he’s not the only one being forcibly roped into painful experiments, often after being ambushed and killed, but he hates ever time it happens to Nastya, too. Her violin have improved their music sessions immensely, and it’s nice to have someone – He snorts bitterly, because neither _normal_ or even _human_ are exactly accurate descriptors for either of them. But it feels good to have someone else around, someone who won't suddenly pop around a corner to drag him off to surgery.

“Something wrong?” Nastya has straightened up and looks at him, brow furrowed in concern. It makes Jonny uncomfortable, it’s too much like… affection. He firmly reminds himself that he left all feelings that aren’t disdain, rage and hatred behind on New Texas, and just because he’s apparently stuck with this new person it doesn’t mean he can go and become attached to her.

“No.” He gets up, fingering the handle of his gun. “I’ll go… whatever. I’ll see where we are and when we make landfall next.”

*

In the end, it was a lost cause not to get attached to the only other immortal being in his constant presence that isn’t the Doc. It’s soon clear that Nastya isn’t going anywhere, especially since her weird connection to the ship quickly grows into something much more. The first time Jonny walks in on her _fucking the fucking goddamn ship_ it might be the most disturbing experience of his life, and at this point that’s saying quite a lot.

He’s already in a shit mood after waking in a panic after a nightmare of – _No_. He cracks down on the thought with a fist to the wall – and then every little thing that can go wrong while making breakfast on a fucking spaceship can go wrong does. So he’s on the hunt for Nastya to see if she maybe wants to play with him for a while, just the two of them. She’d said something about an idea for a song, and that’s usually a good distraction.

The hum of the engines grows stronger as he gets closer to the engine room, and loud enough that he doesn’t hear her through the wall. He doesn’t bother to knock, because why would he? He’s found her down here plenty of times before, fiddling with bits of cable and pipe to fix whatever she thinks needs fixing. So when he’s met by a loud, ecstatic gasp as he throws open the door and sees Nastya half-naked with cables wrapped all around her and –

He slams the door shut. _Ew._ He rubs his eyes in an attempt to dispel the image from his brain, to no avail. Just as he’s contemplating drawing his gun to see if shooting himself in the head can make him forget the whole thing, the door opens and Nastya comes out, a wrench hanging loosely in her hand. She’s dishevelled and smudged with machine oil, but at least she’s dressed now. Jonny pushes away from the wall he was leaning on and rounds on her.

“What the fuck!” He waves wildly in direction of the engine room, but Nastya only raises an eyebrow at him. “It’s – it’s a fucking _ship_! A piece of – of fucking space junk! Ugh, it’s gross! _”_ The wrench hits him just above his ear, and the last thing he hears before it comes down again, crushing his skull properly is:

“ _Never_ insult my girlfriend again!”


	2. Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Ashes isn’t scared when they wake up, they’re angry. Angry at the world, at some bastard called Smooth Mickey, angry at Jonny and Nastya for – who the fuck knows, and who the fuck cares? Jonny fumes as he stomps off after being told to fuck off in no uncertain terms. They don’t need some fucking babysitter, they’d spat at him before collapsing in yet another coughing fit that leaves them wheezing and shaking, clenched hands pressed to their chest as they try to relearn how to breathe with their new metal lungs._   
>    
>  _Nastya slinks down into the engine room to cuddle with the Aurora, or whatever else they get up to down there, leaving Jonny to do his introductory spiel alone. Once Ashes has exhausted themselves raging, he tries again, this time in a decidedly less friendly manner._
> 
> Ashes joins the crew.

Things get a bit weird for a while after that. They sing, they laugh, they fight – sometimes each other, sometimes other people, and soon they even stop feeling guilty after killing each other. The sight of quicksilver blood or his own brains sprayed over the wall loses its unnerving quality, and the only rule they have back then is _No violence while sorting out the cleaning rota._ Carmilla appears to find this the height of entertainment and leaves them to it, only intervening to do “routine maintenance” on their mechanisms afterwards. (Millennia later, Marius will tell them that it was their way of working through their feelings about being mechanised, and Ashes will be seriously awed at how it takes them less than a minute to descend upon him and kill him in a show of spontaneously coordinated violence, impressive even by the Mechanisms’ standard.)

The Doc mostly leaves them to their own devices, except for experiments and music sessions, until she suddenly takes off in the shuttle without telling them where she’s going.

“She’s programmed Aurora to orbit this planet, Malone, until she comes back.” She frowns, poking at the buttons in front of the pilot’s seats.

“Well, can you change it?” Jonny hangs over her shoulder until she bodily shoves him away. He lands in a heap on the floor and has to quench an impulse to reach for his gun. It’s not the time right now, he reminds himself, not when the Doc’s finally left them alone on the ship. They’ve talked about it enough times, hiding out in the vents or the other nooks Nastya is fairly sure that Aurora has shown to her alone: to leave, strike out on their own. It’s not like they need Carmilla, even if their music would suffer for it.

“No.” She cocks her head, listening to something Jonny still only thinks are variations of the normal sound the Aurora makes, but always seem to mean something to Nastya. “She took it into consideration before she programmed the autopilot, that we might try to run off, and installed some precautions. So we just have to wait.”

“Right.” Jonny sighs. “Wanna play some monopoly? … I promise I’ll leave the gun in my room, okay?”

“Sure.”

*

Ashes isn’t scared when they wake up, they’re angry. Angry at the world, at some bastard called Smooth Mickey, angry at Jonny and Nastya for – who the fuck knows, and who the fuck cares? Jonny fumes as he stomps off after being told to fuck off in no uncertain terms. They don’t need some fucking babysitter, they’d spat at him before collapsing in yet another coughing fit that leaves them wheezing and shaking, clenched hands pressed to their chest as they try to relearn how to breathe with their new metal lungs.

Nastya slinks down into the engine room to cuddle with the Aurora, or whatever else they get up to down there, leaving Jonny to do his introductory spiel alone. Once Ashes has exhausted themselves raging, he tries again, this time in a decidedly less friendly manner.

“The Doc said you agreed to this. May I ask why the fuck you’d do such a fucking stupid thing?”

“Revenge. I’ll bring that fucker _down_.”

“Right. Maybe the Doc won’t even have to kill you herself, then, just watch from a safe distance.”

“What the fuck are you saying?”

“Oh, she didn’t tell you about the inevitable follow-up to consenting to be one of her little science pets? First thing she usually does after new experiment is up and about is to kill them to make sure it worked properly.”

“… fuck.”

*

To Jonny’s surprise, Carmilla reluctantly lets their newest recruit take the shuttle back down to solid ground alone, without testing if her latest mechanisation attempt has worked or not. Instead, the Doc joins him and Nastya on the observation deck, where they stand side by side in front of the Aurora’s largest window to watch the fireworks. And oh, what fireworks there are! After several hundred years, it’s become quite hard to impress Jonny with violence, but seeing Malone burn far below him… Damn, that’s a sight he won’t forget soon.

He tells Ashes as much when they stumble out of the shuttle, soot stained and stinking of gasoline and smoke. They grin and take the whiskey bottle he offers them, chugging half the contents in one go before handing it back. Jonny grins back as he raises the bottle in a salute before taking his own swig. They will probably get on just fine.

“Come on, let’s go back to commons. Nastya probably wants to congratulate you, and the Doc, too.”

“Sure.”

They stay in orbit that night, and celebrate Ashes joining the crew as Malone burns below them. They drink and sing, and Carmilla digs out a bass out of Instrument Storage when she learns it’s their preferred instrument. After finishing a song, Nastya suddenly gets that faraway look in her eyes that means the Aurora is talking to her, in that infuriating language that still only sounds like creaking and engine hums to Jonny. Then she smiles brilliantly at Ashes.

“Aurora thinks you’re a great addition to the band. She says your voice is beautiful as well.”

“Oh… oh. Thanks. Tell her – thanks.”

“She can understand you, you know. Even if you don’t understand her.”

“… oh.” Ashes looks around them, looking just a bit perturbed. Jonny swirls his whiskey around, contemplating to toss out just what the relationship between the ship and its self-proclaimed engineer looks like. He decides against it; the comedic potential to let Ashes find out by themselves is too great to pass up. The sight from the engine room still haunts him, and it would be quite nice to share that particular trauma with someone else.

All in all, it’s a very pleasant evening. Until the Doc ruins it, by deciding that it’s time to see if her latest creation holds up to scientific scrutiny, as they didn’t do so on their own while taking care of their unfinished business.

They’ve given up the music for the moment, and Nastya has retreated to her favourite corner and plugged a cable into the port in her hand, to share the whiskey buzz with the Aurora. She sits there, giggling and talking quietly into the vent she’s leaning against. Ashes and Jonny are playing cards, and Jonny is thrilled to find out that Ashes knows of a whole array of new, exciting ways to cheat. Jonny has just lost in yet another unexpected way when a gunshot rings out and Ashes slumps forward, blood splattering the cards on the table. Jonny leaps up with a yelp, his chair crashing to the floor behind him. He quickly finds the source of the disruption, calmly holstering her gun and fingering a stopwatch.

“Why the fuck do you do that?!” he yells at her. “Don’t you know that it works by now?”

“I still have to check”, she replies, tone infuriatingly level. “Something might have gone wrong, but if I discover it quickly enough it might be fixed. And if not, all the better not to have had any time to grow to fond of them.” She pauses before fixing him with a look so old and weary that he has to blink. “Of you.”

“ _Fond_. Yeah, right.” He glances towards the corner. Nastya is sitting very still, clenching the cable wrapped around her arm.

“You don’t believe that?” Carmilla searches his face, her eyes sad.

“No?” His heart’s steady ticking glitches for a second and he rubs angrily at it. “This isn’t what you do to someone you’re _fond_ of!”

“Would you rather be alone, then? Forever?”

“Fuck you!” He does not want to delve into the implications of that, _no_. Fortunately he’s saved the Doc’s reply by Ashes, who coughs and stirs at the table.

“So that’s what it feels like”, they groan. “Fuck, that hurts.”

*

Ashes’ temper turns out to be as fiery as the rest of their personality, and when something sets them off, things burn. Barely three weeks after they left Malone, a second house rule has been added: _No arson, guns or explosives allowed in the kitchen_ . (And beneath it , written a few week s later in angry capitals: _NO SHIP FUCKING IN THE KITCHEN, NASTYA!_ Underneath, Ashes’ untidy scrawl: _Is other fucking fair game?_ Answered in Nastya’s handwriting: _NO._ _Unfair!_ Jonny would never admit to still having that original list of house rules buried deep in his closet in a well sealed anti-aging case, but it stays there for the rest of their long, long lives.)

Being three (or sometimes four) instead of two (or three, depending on the circumstances) opens up a whole lot of new possibilities for adventure. Even immortal as they are, there are limits of what they can accomplish when they are severely outnumbered. Ashes’ taste for large-scale destruction is a very nice complement to Jonny’s undirected but more personalized brand of violence, and to Nastya’s calculated attacks. The sight of a place going up in flames behind them is thrilling, especially considering the join effort preceding the fire. They’re loud and obnoxious, and are beginning to build something of a reputation in the systems they pass on their way through the stars.

Sometimes things are quieter, though, especially when they are deep in space with no planetary systems within a couple of years’ distance. Although Ashes took to being immortal easier and fast than Jonny or Nastya, leaving a past like theirs fully behind isn’t possible, not even after turning its physical form into an ashen wasteland.

While night and day are largely meaningless far from any sun, the Aurora keeps an artificial 24 hour cycle to give her crew some semblance of regular hours. Its effectiveness is quite limited, because Carmilla is nocturnal by nature, Jonny by choice, and Nastya rarely bothers to actually go to sleep – she just ends up passing out in whatever cosy nook in the vents she has crawled into. Ashes, however, have always enjoyed sleeping late in the mornings, but for the first years, sleep proves hard to come by.

So they take to wandering the ship, or spend the night on the observation deck, staring out at the stars dotting the black around them. That’s where Jonny finds them first. They don’t turn as he silently sits down next to them, and he doesn’t mention the wet tracks on their cheeks. He holds out a cigarette, lighting one for himself.

“Yuck”, is the first thing they say. “Where’d you get these?” Jonny shrugs, taking a deep drag.

“Some backwater asteroid outpost. I’m out of everything else, they’re better than nothing.”

“I guess.” They stare at the glowing tip, its own miniature star in the night. “I’ll get us some good cigars next time we land somewhere halfway civilised. Say what you will about Mickey, he did have good taste in smokes.”

“So did One-Eyed Jack.” Jonny rests his chin on his knees. He hasn’t sung that song to Ashes yet, but they don’t seem inclined to press the issue. “D’you regret it?” Ashes snorts, a bitter sound that echoes in the quiet.

“No. Not a fucking chance. Do you?”

For the first time in centuries, Jonny actually considers the question. He finds the answer hasn’t changed.

“Nope.”

They spend many nights that way, the glow from their cigarettes (or cigars, whenever Ashes is inclined to share the collection they start as soon as they get the chance) the only points of illumination inside the great window, matching the stars outside. Sometimes Nastya joins them, but she claims they’re shit at comforting someone who can’t sleep and usually ends up creeping back to where she can be closer to the Aurora. One night, they find a large mattress placed in front of the window, along with a note in Carmilla’s handwriting: _I’ll be back_.

“Well, that spells trouble”, is Ashes’ only comment, and Jonny can’t help but agree.


	3. Brian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“What the fuck are you doing?” He’s standing next to the operating table, and the sheet that covered the robot is now lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. The robot’s chest cavity is gaping open, and inside it is an erratically beating human heart._  
>  _Carmilla straightens up and turns around._  
>  _“His name is Brian. He’s what I’ve been looking for.”_  
>   
>  Brian joins the crew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I boinked the order of their mechanisation, so let’s mess up the canon a bit more (while still staying _fairly_ on track).
> 
> Sorry for the wait, I guess life and x-mas happened... and then this chapter got way longer than I expected.

Immortality does have its perks, they all agree on that. Like that they can be reasonably sure that nothing they do can cause any permanent damage, which means that the possibilities for suicidally reckless behaviours grow exponentially. All of them take advantage of this, and usually, they’re fine. Sometimes, however, things go wrong.

“Shit, shit, _shit_! Come on, we gotta get her to the Doc’s lab, don’t fucking _drop_ her, Ashes!”

Ashes roll their eyes, but adjust their grip on Nastya’s stiff, icy form. What was supposed to be a quick and easy act of piracy went south almost the moment they boarded the slow little cargo ship and triggered its defence systems: instead of the usual trap or alarm, they were doused in liquid nitrogen. Jonny and Ashes revived quickly enough, stiff and shivering with residual chill, but something with the extreme cold reacted badly with Nastya’s mechanism. Her blood gave no sign of thawing as they dragged her back into the shuttle and hurried back to the Aurora, Jonny swearing the whole time, both at the fact that he didn’t get to shoot a single person and that Nastya is currently a literal lump of ice, her empty eyes wide open.

If someone forced an answer out of Ashes at gunpoint on why Jonny is acting so strangely, they might say that he’s scared. They’ve seen him unsettled before, and afraid of Carmilla’s experiments, but not like this, vibrating with terror and false bravado.

They make their way down toward Carmilla’s workshop, the Aurora rumbling erratically around them.

“She’ll be okay”, Ashes tells the ceiling, and the ship’s noises change for a moment. Jonny doesn’t appear to notice as he struggles to keep hold of Nastya’s shoulders. It’s a long way to the workshop, located deep in the Aurora’s bowels, and Ashes wonders if Jonny knows what he’s looking for. They first suggested the medbay, but he was adamant, despite not having seen hide nor hair of Carmilla for more than two years, the workshop sitting abandoned and untouched.

Now though, when they draw nearer, Ashes can hear movement and sees that the lights are already on.

“Jonny, someone’s there.” Nastya slips out of their grip and falls to the floor with a horrible clattering sound. It goes quiet inside the workshop. Then the door opens and Carmilla steps out, looking weary and dishevelled. Her lab coat is spattered with blood and tiny burn marks.

Jonny goes stiff. From their viewpoint from the floor where they’ve knelt to try to get Nastya back up, Ashes can see his knuckles are white from clenching his fists so tight he must be drawing blood. Then all at once, it’s like all fight and bravado just drains out of him, and he takes a step forward, gesturing towards Nastya on the floor.

“Help her”, he says, voice tight in a way Ashes has never heard before. “You have to help her, _now_.” His hand twitches in the direction of his pistol, but Carmilla is already kneeling at Nastya’s side, touching her icy skin after pushing Ashes out of the way.

“I think we just need to thaw her”, she says, and Jonny explodes.

“Just – it’s not _just_ anything! She’s been like that for almost an hour! Her – her fucking mechanism can’t melt her, because you forgot to, fuck, I don’t know! Not make her blood out of fucking mercury?!”

Carmilla ignores him, and instead turns to Ashes.

“Help me get her into the lab”, she says, and together they hoist Nastya back up, Ashes taking most of her weight. Jonny has sagged back against the wall, and stands there glaring at them, his chest heaving. Inside the workshop, equipment and paper is scattered everywhere, and – Ashes does a double take. Something is lying on the operating table in the middle of the room; something large and metal, partly covered with a sheet. A… robot? They frown at the discarded welder mask next to it, but then Nastya slides in their grip and they have to focus on the task at hand. Carmilla directs them to a bed next to the wall, where they carefully lay Nastya down.

They pile heating blankets on her as Carmilla goes about her doctor business, trying to examine Nastya’s frozen corpse. Neither of them hear Jonny enter the workshop until he knocks over a tray of surgical implements that scatter all over the floor.

“What the fuck are you doing?” He’s standing next to the operating table, and the sheet that covered the robot is now lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. The robot’s chest cavity is gaping open, and inside it is an erratically beating human heart.

Carmilla straightens up and turns around.

“His name is Brian. He’s what I’ve been looking for.”

Jonny stares at her for a long moment, then at Brian.

“So it’s another one.” He looks back to Carmilla with narrowed eyes. “Fuck you! I wish you’d stayed away!”

He slams the door behind him and his pistol already drawn. Ashes wonders what’s going to get demolished this time, but as they’d prefer if it isn’t them, they decide to stick with Nastya and Carmilla for a while. And… They glance at the robot with its unnervingly beating heart. Brian.

*

Nastya rejoins them the day before Brian is finished. While the heating blankets eventually did thaw her enough to let her mechanism do its work, Carmilla insisted on keeping her in the workshop for some routine maintenance and improvements, to prevent freezing from having this effect again.

After five days, she stumbles into common room, grey-faced and trembling. Jonny drops the cards he’s holding and is out of his chair as soon as she collapses onto the couch.

“Took you fucking long enough”, he says. “Almost thought you’d died or something.” Nastya sticks her tongue out at him.

“We’re getting company soon”, she says. “Did you see the…”

“The robot with a heart? Yeah.” Ashes gathers up the deck and stuffs it into their pocket.

“Well, she kicked me out because he’s going to wake up any day now and would be overwhelmed by too many people. So you better start figuring out how you’re going to spin our lifestyle to this one, Jonny.”

“Fuck that! We’re dumping him on the next planet we land on!”

And there isn’t much to say to that, so Ashes moves to the armchair opposite the couch and starts to deal a new hand of cards, for all three of them this time.

*

Only Nastya has seen Brian in a reasonably finished state, and he is nothing like any of them expects. He’s huge, towering even above Nastya, which immediately pisses Jonny off. And he’s beautiful, a mechanical masterwork made of shining brass, moving far more smoothly than any normal robot has the right to do. When they enter the common room, he’s trailing a few steps behind Carmilla, who looks proud and stern at the same time.

“Everyone, I’d like you to meet Brian. He’s going to be our pilot and drumbot. Be nice to him, he spent a long time floating alone in space before I found him.”

That makes even Jonny freeze up for a moment, while Brian shudders and curls in on himself. Jonny pulls himself together first.

“So you’re the only one who gets to kill us first, are you?” he spits before stalking off, roughly shoving his way past Brian, who has started trembling with a low, tinkling sound.

Nastya is the one who takes pity on him first, holding out her hand to him. She remembers the terror she felt when she woke up the first time, and from what Carmilla told her as she worked on him, his fate before he was remade far worse than anything she ever experienced in her first life. The thought of floating in space, lost and cold and alone, thinking it to be forever… She shudders.

“Don’t mind Jonny”, she says, just as Carmilla claps her hands together.

“Well, I’ll leave you to get acquainted. I will go and find a few instruments for you to try out, Brian, because those hands you had could only belong to a musician.” She walks off as Brian stares quietly at his hands. They are made of polished brass like the rest of him, but the palms look to be coated with something softer, probably so he can play instruments without damaging them. Slowly and carefully, Nastya puts her hand on his elbow.

“Come on, say hello to Ashes.”

Reluctantly, he follows her into the common room where Ashes has finally got up from the couch. Instead, they’re leaning against the wall as they light a cigar.

“So you’re the new one, huh? Well, it’s not so bad after the first few times.”

The robot swallows, a motion he really shouldn’t be able to perform at all. Nastya cranes her head to get a better look at his throat. What has Carmilla done to him, to make the metal move like that?

“The f-first few times of what?” His voice sounds nearly human, and he nervously clears his throat. Nastya’s fingers are itching to get a closer look at how he works; if only she hadn’t been so weak when Carmilla was working on him right next to her! Ashes sighs.

“Fuck, Jonny’s right about the Doc having a shitty bedside manner. Dying, is what I mean.”

“I don’t want to die!” He abruptly sits down, wringing his hands with his eyes firmly fixed on the floor. “It hurt so much”, he whispers. “I was so cold.”

“Yeah, well, I was really, really hot. But you won’t, not permanently. Whatever the Doc does, it’s made us immortal. Shit, Nastya, can’t you get Jonny? This is his job, isn’t it?”

“You’re doing fine, Ashes.” She sits down next to Brian. “Tell him the next bit.”

“Yeah, so… Carmilla will want to check it worked. If you’ll come back. Just so you’re aware, it’s nothing to worry about, okay?” They smile at him, taking a deep drag on their cigar, but Brian definitely looks worried.

*

It’s no huge surprise that Brian doesn’t actually get left behind on the first planet they land on, although not for lack of trying on Jonny’s part. He tries to make them sneak back to the Aurora several times, and leave both Carmilla and Brian behind while they look for a new accordion, since the one they had apparently was broken. The plan, however, is derailed by Jonny getting into an argument over some horribly overpriced booze he absolutely wanted to bring back. When he’s subsequently shot three times in the chest, Nastya and Ashes simply sigh and drag him back to the ship, and settle in to wait.

A few days and several heart-tinkering sessions with Carmilla later, Jonny is in his absolutely worst mood and decides to make it everyone’s problem. Recognising the signs, Ashes retreats to their room and Nastya crawls into the vents to spend some quality time with Aurora. None of them thought of warning Brian, though, so he stays on the bridge to fiddle with the controls. He’s still trying to get a feel for her, and thinks he’s maybe started to figure out how to communicate her, even without the instinctual understanding of her language that Nastya seems to have.

Jonny bursts in through the door without warning, waving his gun and firing a round into the wall opposite the control panel. Brian ducks instinctively; while Ashes’ warning about Carmilla’s commitment to the scientific method quickly proved correct, as well as their words about his immortality, he very much prefers to die as little as possible. That is however not something Jonny cares about, so he dives for Brian, who kicks out and starts to crawl away when Jonny is distracted by his bleeding nose for a moment.

He doesn’t get far before Jonny jumps on his back, tangling his hand in Brian’s copper-wire hair, pressing down with his knee –

“What the hell is that?” The pressure lets up, and Jonny is suddenly tugging at his shirt instead, pushing it out of the way and poking something in the small of Brian’s back. “Why the fuck do you have a switch on your back?”

He flips it before Brian has the time to reply, and for a second, nothing happens.

Then things happen very fast: Brian’s eyes flash red, and Jonny is abruptly tossed to the floor and in the process of being crushed under an angry robot. He can see that Brian’s saying something, but the blood rushing in his ears drowns it out as Brian presses down on his throat until something goes _crunch_ and the world goes black.

When he comes to, Brian is staring at him, looking surprised.

“Could you take another look at that switch?” he asks when Jonny groans and coughs a few times. He helps Jonny up and pulls his shirt out of the way.

“Huh, something’s engraved around it. It says Ends Justify Means and Means Justify Ends. And right now it’s set to EJM.”

“I – I need to talk to Carmilla.”

“Like hell you do, we need to show this to Nastya and Ashes! Tell them that you can be fun after all!”

And just like that, Jonny grabs Brian’s hand and pulls him towards the common room, his resentment apparently forgotten.

*

The switch changes things. Brian privately prefers the MJE setting, because it aligns better with the man he always strived to be, but he can’t reach it on his own, and Jonny seems hell bent on having him on what he calls “the fun setting”.

At least until Brian decides that the end of _not piloting the Aurora into a fucking star to finally get some goddamn peace and quiet_ very much justifies the means of laying up the three mostly-human of the crew with a truly awful case of food poisoning. When they have recovered enough to lie in an exhausted pile in the common room instead of locked in their respective en-suite ba throoms, Ashes calls a Crew Meeting that results in a new house rule: _Do not let Brian cook on EJM._

And since Brian is by far the best cook of them – Ashes does protest this, they can cook! Sure, it usually ends up setting the kitchen of fire, but… Nastya throws their bass at them, rolling her eyes. “Yes, Ashes”, she says. “That’s the point!” – this makes even Jonny lay off the switch for the most part.

And so life (and quite often, impermanent death) on the Aurora goes on, and they adjust their life and music to fit around their drumbot and pilot as well.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are the best <3


End file.
